Notes from Underground

He runs headlong downstairs after them. "So this is it, this is it at last — contact with real life," he mutters. "This is very different from the Pope's leaving Rome and going to Brazil, very different from the ball on Lake Como!" The fantasy has collided with the actual world — and the actual world is a snowy Petersburg street at night. He hails a sledge. But as he raises his foot to climb in, the recollection of Simonov having just given him six roubles doubles him up and he tumbles into it like a sack. "No, I must do a great deal to make up for all that. But I will make up for it or perish on the spot this very night." His mind works out the plan with manic precision. He cannot hope they will beg for his friendship — "That is a mirage, cheap mirage, revolting, romantic and fantastical — that's another ball on Lake Como." Therefore he is bound to slap Zverkov's face. It is his duty. The logic of honour demands it: a slap brands a man, and cannot be wiped out by blows or anything except a duel. Zverkov will be forced to fight. He imagines the sequence: they will all beat him and kick him out — no matter; he will have had the initiative. At the door he will call out that they are not worth his little finger. The practicalities: pistols (salary in advance), a second (the first person on the street is bound to consent, by the laws of chivalry — even the director himself), the duel at daybreak. He works through it all. He also pictures what happens if Zverkov refuses to fight: he will turn up at the posting station when Zverkov sets off tomorrow, catch him by the leg, pull off his coat, bite his hand — "See what lengths you can drive a desperate man to!" He will shout to the assembled multitude. Then the fifteen-year fantasy. Prison, Siberia; fifteen years later he trudges back, a beggar in rags, to find Zverkov married and happy in a provincial town, a grown-up daughter. He will say: "Look, monster, at my hollow cheeks and my rags! I've lost everything — my career, my happiness, art, science, the woman I loved, and all through you." Then he will fire into the air and Zverkov will hear nothing more of him. He is on the point of tears — then catches himself: he knows perfectly well that all of this is out of Pushkin's Silvio and Lermontov's Masquerade. He is overcome with shame. He stops the horse. Gets out. Stands still in the snow in the middle of the street. The driver gazes at him, sighing, astonished. He cannot go on — it is evidently stupid. He cannot leave things as they are — that would be as though he had accepted the insult. "No! It is ordained! It is fate! Drive on!" He throws himself back into the sledge and, in his impatience, punches the driver on the back of the neck. He unbuttones himself against the wet snow, regardless of it. Forgetting everything else. "I had finally decided on the slap, and felt with horror that it was going to happen now, at once, and that no force could stop it." All was lost, anyway. The deserted street lamps gleam sullenly in the snowy darkness like torches at a funeral. He arrives almost unconscious, knocks and kicks at the door, feeling fearfully weak in his legs and knees. Simonov had warned them — another gentleman might arrive. It is one of those "millinery establishments" that were abolished by the police some time ago: a shop by day, a brothel by night if you had an introduction. There is no one there. They have already separated. And here is the shock he doesn't expect: he feels "as though I had been saved from death" — joyfully, all over. He should have given the slap, he is certain of it — but now they are not here and everything has vanished and changed. The entire furious, righteous purpose of the ride evaporates in an instant. He is relieved. He begins looking at the girl who has come in. A fresh, young, rather pale face, straight dark eyebrows, grave wondering eyes that attract him at once. He would have hated her if she had been smiling. Something simple and good-natured in her face — something that stood in her way here, he is sure, and that none of those fools had noticed. Something loathsome stirs in him. He goes straight up to her. He chances to look in the glass. His harassed face strikes him as revolting in the extreme — pale, angry, abject, dishevelled hair. "No matter, I am glad of it. I am glad that I shall seem repulsive to her; I like that."